President McKinley signs Gold Standard Act, March 14, 1900

On this day in 1900, President William McKinley signed the Gold Standard Act, which established gold as the sole basis for redeeming paper currency. The act halted the practice of bimetallism, which had allowed silver to also serve as a monetary standard. It set the value of gold at $20.67 an ounce and valued the dollar at 25.8 grains of gold.

In the run-up to passage of the act, the nation went through a decades-long epic political battle over the relative value of gold and silver — a battle that tested whether one of those precious metals should be preferred over the other in the U.S. monetary system. Introduction of paper currency during the Civil War had complicated this debate because it promised to redeem the money in either gold or silver upon demand…>MORE> (Politico.com)